Perspective – Page 26

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 11

Friday, September 11, 2020

Light of death

Fire of life

Life in the Light, even in our deaths

Psalm 39:13

Turn your gaze away from me, that I may smile again, before I depart and am no more.

Matthew 15:24-8

He answered [the disciples], ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ But [the Canaanite woman] came and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, help me.’ He answered, ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ She said, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.’ Then Jesus answered her, ‘Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.’ And her daughter was healed instantly.

Words of Grace For Today

There are many sayings that poignantly highlight some aspect of human existence. One is ‘no on gets out of life alive.’ Another ‘the fatality rate for humans is 100%.’ Another, ‘In the end what do they call the man who accumulates the most [fill in ‘power’, ‘money’, ‘status’, or anything else humans compete for]? … dead.’

Knowing we will die is part of knowing who we are … and what we are not. We are not immortal, nor godlets. God gazing on us directly is a most terrifying experience (or so we are told, never having experienced it myself.) As one approaches the end of life, it is a simple step, one that every instinct drives us to avoid until it is unavoidable. Then it becomes an inevitable, immediate, one way event, with no mulligans.

One can waste all of life fretting about one’s inevitable death. Or one can learn to immerse oneself in the present, find great joy in the abundant blessings God fills and overfills our lives with, and we can smile. Our smiles are not mere lips turned up at the corners, nor even a twinkle of life in our eyes. Our smiles at the great abundance and wonders of the universe and our lives in it, stretch from our mouths, far past our eyes, deep into our minds and to the foundation of our souls.

Those smiles help us imitate the Canaanite woman, who knows enough: 1) Jesus can heal her daughter, 2) she can beg to Jesus, 3) she will persist no matter the insults thrown at her. She trusts that God wants to heal her daughter, and Jesus is the One who God sends to heal all who he encounters.

Being insulted always matters, it just does not matter even one iota in the context of saving her daughter. She’ll take whatever scraps of Grace Jesus has for a non-Jew, for a Canaanite, for a woman. Even a scrap is enough to save her daughter.

No matter who we are, even a scrap of Grace is more than we need for life to be wondrously filled with breathe, love and hope.

No matter who we are, Jesus has time for us.

That ought to put a smile into us who know Jesus is our judge, or it will scare the living daylights right out of us, if we do not trust Jesus’ to provide us wretched sinners Grace.

We pray, with simultaneous smiles and terror for we are saint/sinners always, that Jesus will show us the way as we follow him, and that Jesus will turn away for we would like to smile without the terror ripping our hearts out of us.

Always in terror and in our joyous smiles, God is with us. The Spirit guides us. And Jesus reaches out, and asks us to lend him our thoughts, our voices, and our hands, that we can be Jesus’ presence for others.

That’s Hallelujah … everyday, every way.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 09

Wednesday, September 9, 2020

In the Dark

The Light,

God’s Promise Guides Us

Isaiah 47:13-14

You are wearied with your many consultations; let those who study the heavens stand up and save you, those who gaze at the stars and at each new moon predict what shall befall you. See, they are like stubble, the fire consumes them; they cannot deliver themselves from the power of the flame. No coal for warming oneself is this, no fire to sit before!

Hebrews 6:18

Through two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible that God would prove false, we who have taken refuge might be strongly encouraged to seize the hope set before us.

Words of Grace For Today

The cool of fall has arrived, so that sitting in front of a fire is not merely an evening pleasure for campers, but a necessity for keeping oneself warm.

The fire that God sends the condemned to is no such fire. It is like a raging wildfire that consumes everything in its path. Our human efforts to know the future, in order that we can have the advantage over others are legendary … and futile. Our efforts to destroy others in order to get ahead are also legendary. Destruction we succeed at quite well. Getting ahead is a real failure as well, not that we have not often thought we’ve won and made great headway forward. It is that we make headway toward the Devil and our own condemnation, not that we make headway toward God’s will and design for us, namely that we live sacrificial lives in order that others may live abundantly.

The challenges that the Devil places in our paths seem without end. They obscure our vision of God’s will, our ability to thrive as we give life to others, and our discerning the value of truth in the face of lies that seem to flourish better than Canadian thistle or leafy spurge.

Into a world filled with these challenges we awake each day. God knows this well, for God is with us, Jesus’ name is Emmanuel (God with us). God created us with a spirit to discern Good from Evil, and God knows we so often choose Evil, for others and for ourselves.

So God makes promises for us to know and trust. Land flowing with milk and honey. Descendents greater than the stars in the skies. A Saviour for all people of every age that we can live freed from our bondage to sin, so that we can imitate the Christ in our daily lives, forgiving others their sins.

God guarantees these promises by the greatest authority of all, God’s own.

In this we can live, trusting our very lives to God’s promises and God’s living Word.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 5

Saturday, September 5, 2020

Ice and Floods

Heat and Drought

Nothing compares to the Evil humans inflict on others.

Isaiah 25:4

You have been a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in their distress, a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat, when the blast of the ruthless was like a winter rainstorm.

Revelation 2:8-9

May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Words of Grace For Today

Since Jesus’ record replaces ours, since our baptisms we have known and been able to trust even in the most horrific and trying times that our record before God will be sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Not even the miracles of God (or so we say) can (other than by replacing ours with Jesus’ record) keep our spirit and soul and body sound and blameless at all. We have and keep free choice, which in exercising we continually sin, i.e. we are hardly sound and blameless.

The question is not if we can be sinless. If it were no one would be acceptable to God, and the Kingdom of God would be empty forever.

The question, after God favours us and blesses us, what are we going to do with this ultimate favour and blessing?

Then we may pray earnestly that it can be said of us that when the blast of the ruthless was like a winter rainstorm, then we have been a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in their distress, a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat.

There is no shortage today of the blast of the ruthless. Now is the time to act. It is the time to be the refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needing in their distress, and a shelter from all that comes, whether it is the vicious rain, hail, snow and windstorms of climate change (the ‘new normal this year is last year’s extreme weather‘), or the blistering heat, wind and locust of drought, or the flooding of rain that will not let up.

The real blast, as in every generation, comes not from nature, not even pandemics like Covid 19. The real blast comes from ruthless and evil people, possessed by the empty promises of the Devil. The two legged wild animals bring more disaster to more people, more quickly than any new weather storm.

The dangerous ones are those who say there is no danger. They claim with words and/or actions: There is no more Covid19. It’s back to normal. We’re done with Covid 19. There is none here. They likely will not die or be maimed by Covid 19 or any other real danger. They will be oblivious to the loss of life around them, unless it invades their own home, and some even then pay it no heed.

May God protect us. We may wish that we can be sound and blameless, but that is the first step to ignoring our place, station, calling and weaknesses as the two legged children of God that Jesus calls us to be.

We still wish for what is not possible, and then we pray: May God protect us. May God protect you.

Before it is too late.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 2

Wednesday, September 2, 2020

Small part of creation?

Are we like the bark, the reed, or one of the shells?

We are like a grain of sand

Psalm 148:3.5

Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all you shining stars! Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens! Let them praise the name of the Lord, for he commanded and they were created.

Revelation 4:11

You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.

Words of Grace For Today

I heard a repeat sermon, one of the joy of a city boy climbing a mountain with friends, and experiencing for the first time the wonders of creation.

Those of us who have lived outdoors more of our lives than in, who have engaged with creation for generation upon generation*, who have climbed mountains since we were able, having grown up with the likes of Mount Kilimanjaro and the Great Rift Valley as a common enough background for family vacations (actually they were visits to other missionary families in Tanganyika, before it’s independence and merger with Zanzibar to become Tanzania) have known in our bones that God’s creation is marvellous.

*It turns out that at my father’s 90th birthday celebration now a few years ago, a cousin included in her presentation that the men in our family have sought out the wilds of creation, mountains, forests, and lakes for as many generations as we can trace back our family roots in Sweden and Norway, across Minnesota, and into western Canada. We’ve got good Viking blood that draws us to engage with creation as part of our daily living. Grampa Sam moved to live on a lake in the woods in Northern Minnesota (actually central, but like Alberta it’s the perspective that is used as a reference, not the geographical reality.) My father bought a farm 10 miles out of town back when that was a 9 miles from any acreage, loved to farm when he came home from his medical practice, and took us into the woods for vacations most every year. One of my brothers and his son live in the wilds of Alaska, loving every minute of it. Uncle Sam worked for the telephone company, spending work and vacation time outdoors. He loved to hunt, fish, and camp. Retirement was a pickup truck with a camper on it, a fishing rod and rifle, Aunt June (who was also at home in the wilds), and a prayer of thanks. His sons, my cousins, have continued that tradition.

First time or a very familiar experience, one stands bolderdashed in wonder, when one stops to think about how God, with a Word, created such a wondrous creation. First time or a very familiar experience, one stands tiny and humbled by one’s place in that creation, as if an ant before a cedar tree 12 feet in diameter and more than 200 feet tall.

(If you, like that preacher, honestly have never encountered the wonders of creation in the wilds, take that opportunity if it comes your way; you will not be sorry, hopefully.)

To think that God even knows of us, or bothers with us in all that splendour. More that

How can we respond other than to thank God with praise and honour … and to honour creation with the best care we can manage … before we kill it.

Creator of heaven and earth + tiny creatures = awe, praise, and honour.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Sept 1

Tuesday, September 1, 2020

Bush, Weeds and Wonder,

What Do We See?

Isaiah 11:10

On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.

Mark 1:10-11

Just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’

Words of Grace For Today

With the restrictions of Covid 19, sufficient to ‘flatten the curve’ but not stop it in it’s tracks, we have seen again and again that so much is dependent upon trust, reputation, and people’s reputations. So much of what seems to be significant is determined by what people think of you, or of someone else.

If we trust the chief medical officers, and/or the scientists, and/or the polititians, and/or the news reporters and internet writers … IF we TRUST then we listen and follow the ‘sensible’ recommendations/demands they make on us. The minute we hear that the any of these people are not trustworthy (and we hear it so often, sometimes with great justification!) then we stop listening, stop understanding, and stop complying … and fools that we can be, we often then stop doing what we ourselves know is best. We stop keeping physical distance and wearing masks and shields and washing/sanitizing our hands. The whole effort to flatten the curve collapses and the bodies start piling up. Real consequences for not listening and complying!

God wants us to listen … so to whom do we listen?

The root of Jesse will become, on that day (so it is not now), a signal for the people and people will seek him out.

Jesus is not just baptized. God’s voice comes from the heavens, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’

These are written for us to read so that we might know to whom God would have us listen.

God would have us listen to the root of Jesse, Jesus, God’s own Son.

Listening to Jesus, gives us plenty of direction: love one another. With that we know we ought to help protect everyone from Covid 19. That’s a small part of loving others.

Wearing masks, shields, keeping physical distance, hand washing and sanitizing … and whatever else the scientists and chief medical officers recommend to us IS what we will DO, out of love.

Then for every in person visit we cannot make, we make a gracious, caring phone call. For every handshake we deny, we extend a warm, empathetic word. For every hug we cannot give, we extend words of clear, simple, unconditional love.

We can become more empathetic as a people, more caring, and more loving. Covid 19 is an opportunity for us to learn how … to listen to God and to those God sends to guide us forward.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Aug 31

Monday, August 31, 2020

Trees

and child Trees

God created this all

and us in this world.

Psalm 100:3

Know that the Lord is God. It is God who made us, and we are God’s; we are God’s people, and the sheep of God’s pasture.

Acts 17:26-28

From one ancestor God made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and God allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for God and find God – though indeed God is not far from each one of us. For “In God we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your own poets have said.

Words of Grace For Today

Who are we?

Whose are we?

Why for are we here?

What is this life all about anyway?

These questions and many more have given humans something to wrestle with in our minds and souls.

It is troubling to not know anything of who we are. Literature is made up of all sorts of examples of people who do not remember who they are. Amnesia comes into play.

The worse cases are when people live through what should be a full life and have not taken time and effort to discover who they are. The un-examined life. Not knowing thy self. Bourgeoisie living. We have lots of names for it.

Worst are the cases where humans make every effort to establish for themselves that they are the king of their universes. The results are always pathetic.

Striving to find (and control) God is common, and futile. God is already, always with us. Trying to control God is the original sin, common to all, and always ends poorly.

We can celebrate: God is with us. God created us, and all the universe. God gave us a thirst and hunger to know God. God claims us and makes us God’s own children.

That should put any pride to rest in us; we remain children always! Not that it does … pride flourishes, a great favourite of the Devil to separate us from God’s unconditional love. A futile effort on the Devil’s part, but the devil is great at convincing us we are separate from God.

As poets have written of since words were first etched and scratched to express the wonder of life being larger than what is only obvious.

That’s where life really is, in surprise and miraculous wonders.

Like God loving us. I can accept me, but you … God is really something! (As truth is for us all, we are more astonished that God has time for us, ourselves, than for other people. We know deep inside how imperfect we are.

Yet, God is here with us. God claims us as God’s own children.

Life is good for God’s children. For us it is no exception, no matter how terrible our circumstances, life with God is good. It is what life is to be.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Aug 30

Sunday, August 30, 2020

Cold Winter Winds Will Blow

Cold Hearts Will Set

The Holy Spirit Will Keep Our Hearts Thawing

Trust God’s Promises

Isaiah 32:17

The effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust for ever.

Romans 14:17

For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Words of Grace For Today

Of what is life?

Food and drink?

Peace, quietness and trust, righteousness and joy?

The basic requirements for minimum and full human life are:

clean air to breath
clean water to drink
nourishing food to eat
adequate clothing to wear
adequate shelter to protect one from the elements
meaningful labour so that one contributes and receives sufficient reward for one’s labour
love: most significantly that one is loved unconditionally, and that one can love others unconditionally.

Food and Drink are requirements, as we all know. One can last 3 or so days without water, and up to a few weeks without food. Not well, and not many times over. One should have water and food multiple times each day to stay healthy.

Yet we can too easily get our priorities all wrong.

We can loose balance, perspective, focus, and gratitude. There are many ways to say this, and it happens to us in as many ways. When we live with food and drink as the focus of our lives, to the detriment of labour and love, then we live off balance, out of kilter, or, as it’s said in so many ways, ‘messed up.’

It is exceedingly difficult to achieve peace, quietness and trust, righteousness or joy. Truthfully one cannot achieve them at all. We receive them as gifts from God.

It is hard to imagine that we would over focus, live out of kilter, living for peace, quietness and trust, righteousness and/or joy. Yet this also is possible. We humans have great ingenuity when it comes to ‘messing up’ life.

These gifts from God are not for us to achieve. Rather they are for us to share, and in sharing God fills us to overflowing with them.

While Covid-19 restrictions, and even the lifting of restrictions and a return to more ‘normal’ can tax us, at times beyond our limits, the stress of these times do not change who we are. The stress just makes very clear to ourselves and to others what kind of people we really are.

We are children of God and wretched sinners, simultaneously. We need to be loved, unconditionally. And to love unconditionally. Yet we ‘mess it all up’ terribly.

Thank God, we are forgiven, and given re-newed life each day, each hour, as the Holy Spirit works in and through us, despite our wretchedness.

It is beginning to feel much like fall as I write this. Cool air blows, tree tops sway, leaves rustle and fly, rain spits and drips. Everything inside is set to retain warmth and let in what light there is. In this day whatever it is like where you are may God’s blessings be obvious and not forgotten by our living off balance.

May we be caught tipped by the weight of blessing raining down on us, refreshing us, giving us the most precious things to experience and share.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Aug 29

Saturday, August 29, 2020

No matter how cold life seems

God is with us, laying down tracks with us

shining on us day and night by sun, moon, and Holy Spirit

Thank God!

2 Chronicles 32:24-25

In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. He prayed to the Lord, and he answered him and gave him a sign. But Hezekiah did not respond according to the benefit done to him, for his heart was proud. Therefore wrath came upon him and upon Judah and Jerusalem.

Luke 17:15-16

Then one of the lepers, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. The leper was a Samaritan.

Words of Grace For Today

False pride and arrogance or humility and gratitude, two apparently mutually exclusive manners of responding to all God has done for us.

In 2 Chronicles the writer interprets the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem as God’s response to Hezekiah’s proud and hard heart. In Luke the writer interprets Jesus’ healing the lepers as done in response simply to the lepers asking.

That one returns to thank Jesus, against Jesus’ directions that they fulfill the Jewish Law and show themselves to the priests (to be recorded as cured and therefore free to return to their families and position in Jewish society.) The one who returns gains nothing by visiting the priests. He is an outsider and gains no ‘return’. Leper or not, he is not accepted into Jewish society. He returns then to Jesus, acknowledging that Jesus has more authority than any priests.

Luke’s message is that those who are burdened with their own religious authorities and practices may well fulfill their obligations to them, Jesus still comes and heals those people. People with no locally recognized religious authorities and practices to fulfill (the Samaritan perhaps had some, just not recognized by the Jews), are free to recognize Jesus’ greater authority and to respond with appropriate gratitude.

Who are we?

We wish we were like the Samaritan, free to recognize Jesus’ authority and power with thanks and gratitude.

If we are honest, we are like the other 9 Jewish lepers, bound to duty to other authorities, and easily able to miss the wonders Jesus provides and therefore easily able to miss out on thanking Jesus and living with wondrous gratitude. That gratitude is a more powerful force in life than ‘falling in love’, about which much is written, spoken and known – how it transforms life for the better (or worse.) Gratitude transforms life always for the better, and it does not wear off after a short few months.

If we are honest, we are also often like Hezekiah, proud and hard hearted, completely capable of pleading to God for help when life catches us in disaster or deadly illness or total loss. But when it comes to giving God thanks for all God has given us, our breath and very lives … Well then we are back to fulfilling our ‘obligations’ to other authorities and demands (like careers, money, status, reputation among those driven by greed and avarice, and false images of ourselves as above or without God).

Luther described all of these as happening simultaneously in our lives as responses to the same events. To which he prayed as we well can: God save us!

And save us, Luther knew as we can know, Jesus already has.

We can choose to live lives transformed by thanks and gratitude. Bit by bit each day.

Why not?

Where else are we going to turn for the living water? the bread of life? the Words of eternal life? the hope that does not disappoint? the promises that fill us so that we have more than enough to share with all who need life?

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Aug 27

Thursday, August 27, 2020

History of Slavery

currency of slavery

Work for Freedom, also in oneself

Joshua 24:17

It is the Lord our God who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight. He protected us along all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed.

Matthew 28:19-20

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’

Words of Grace For Today

We have ‘our orders’. Given to us by the one who brought us up out of slavery in Egypt.

It is all really simple. It is all really complicated.

God sends Moses to lead the people out of slavery in Egypt. Remember the people went there as famine refugees, welcomed by Joseph, Pharaoh’s second in command. They were welcomed and well provided for during the famine and the early years following.

Times change. Joseph’s people multiplied, Joseph is long dead and his Pharaoh. The powerful Egyptians resent the outsiders thriving, so they enslave them and force them into hard labour.

Slavery is a matter of getting significant attention today, as established families in Canada are recognized with street named after them, and now their participation in slavery is exposed. Who we honour and why says much of who we are today, and the powerful of Canada are as much blind to the suffering of those on whose backs they make and maintain their wealth as ever in the bleak history of human oppression and slavery. There is push back. There ought to be always.

God pushed back through Moses and led the people out of slavery into the wilderness for 40 years. It took a generation to cleanse the effects of slavery, to build the people into those who could occupy their own land.

Generations later the people expect and hope that the Christ will lead them to throw off the oppression of the Roman empire. Today many people expect and hope that the Christ will lead them to through off the oppression of so many different governments and multi-national corporations. There is push back to the oppression and slavery. There ought to be always.

Jesus does not come to create yet another new revolution, after which yet another new group of powerful people can oppress others, sometimes those who earlier oppressed them. Jesus comes instead to end all oppression and slavery. Jesus works to transform individuals and families and communities and towns and cities and countries, so that from the inside the attitudes of slavery and oppression are wiped out of each heart, until in the Kingdom of God all slavery and oppression is obliterated. The wonder is that as one’s heart is transformed in baptism through the gifts of the Holy Spirit, slavery and oppression’s effects on ones heart, mind and strength are removed. It is as if through baptism we enter 40 years in the wilderness, so that the effects of slavery and oppression are removed from us entirely.

We work to remove slavery and all kinds of oppression as free people, as blessed people, as peaceful people. We go out into the world as the people who invite people from all other nations to join us, as the people who bring Jesus’ commands: to love one another as ourselves, and our enemies, and as the people with whom Jesus abides even to the end of time.

We are not alone in the wilderness, no matter the challenges, not even Covid 19 and everything that comes with it, irritating precautions and the suffering when precautions are not kept or are not enough.

Facing Covid 19: Daily Words of Grace – Aug 26

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Left Behind by Accident or as Sacrifice?

Christ reconciles us to God, no sacrifice required!

We have a blemish free record, no matter how many ‘gloves’ we’ve lost.

Isaiah 43:24-25

You have not bought me sweet cane with money, or satisfied me with the fat of your sacrifices. But you have burdened me with your sins; you have wearied me with your iniquities. I, I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.

Colossians 1:21-22

You who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him.

Words of Grace For Today

The sacrifices made to God have changed through the centuries and generations. Once we offered birds, animals, and before that other people, even children. We knew that, having done something wrong, having sinned, we owed God payment for our sins.

When we know we have sinned our minds recognize how estranged we’ve made ourselves from God. Knowing what we’ve done we become hostile to God as well.

We ‘dig our own grave’. Yet God does not leave us there.

No sacrifice by us is sufficient to pay for what we have done, and continue to do, and will do. God knew this, knows this. God sent Jesus, his Son, to sacrifice himself, the one last sacrifice needed to set things right between us and God, between all humans and God.

Nothing is needed on our part.

Now since God sets us right with God, holy and blameless … well the possibilities are astronomical, and wondrous.

Jesus calls us and the Holy Spirit equips us to be the voice, hands, and feet of Christ on earth, extending unconditional love to others, providing justice based on truth combined with mercy and wisdom, and blessing all people with more than just the basics of life. As the Holy Spirit equips us we can offer others abundant life. That may require sacrifice on our part, yet all we have is given to us, so it is not really ours to give up, it is ours to share with everyone.

Makes for a wondrous life for us, and for all people.